The Case for Innovative Recruiting

 There is no question that human resource departments need to upgrade their recruiting techniques. Traditional recruiting techniques, such as reading resumes, don’t work anymore. In the digital age, there are just too many ways to submit information, leaving both recruiters and job seekers overwhelmed and frustrated.

Yet, in many cases, recruiting focuses on innovations and process improvements only once a year during budget season. There are several reasons for this: a culture of change only coming once per year and a lack of creativity in budgeting.  During most of the year, HR is led to believe that there is no money for any innovative hiring techniques. Thus, it’s back to the traditional process of collecting resumes, scheduling and conducting phone interviews and coordinating onsite interviews with hiring managers. When the next year comes around, recruiting finds that some technologies and processes are outdated, making it harder to use innovation at all.

It is ineffective to only evaluate recruiting and hiring processes only once per year. In order to get out of the habit of evaluating new technologies and processes during budget season, recruiting needs to make a point of periodically searching for new innovations. For example, once a month HR personnel might want to get together in order to discuss new ways to recruit candidates, improve the candidate experience or reduce expenses. Recruiters could prepare for the meeting by researching new innovations and choosing one to present to HR colleagues. This would provide recruiters with the opportunity to make a business case for the innovation of their choice when talking to HR decision makers. It would also help recruiters focus on new technology so that the candidates they speak with become excited about the recruitment process.

Another advantage of seeking new technologies year-round is that recruiters begin to use their creativity to make new technologies affordable or demonstrate that they are creating value.  Thus, the budget no longer becomes an excuse for failing to incorporate new technologies; it becomes a challenge to overcome as part of the year-round quest for innovation. Once they’ve mastered the art of detaching from budgetary concerns, recruiting can more easily make a business case for adopting these innovations. See this webinar for more ideas about making a business case for video interviewing.

Finally, seeking out new innovations throughout the year gives recruitment the ability to test out new programs and see how well they work. If a program fails during a less busy time of year, recruiters can revise it or eliminate it altogether before attempting to recruit large numbers of candidates with it.

Recruiting candidates can be challenging, especially in industries where there don’t seem to be enough candidates to go around or candidates are in high demand. By focusing on finding innovative recruitment techniques throughout the year, HR departments make it a lot more likely that they will succeed at finding the ideal people to fill open positions. Constantly seeking innovations not only prepares recruiters but also makes the company more attractive to potential employees. Clearly, HR firms need to learn about social media, video interviewing and other innovations in order to become more effective recruiters.